View from the Green Room: The Final Frontier?
Eugene Broderick.
It’s been an incredible journey with Dr Eugene Broderick since Museum Curator Eamon McEneaney first suggested some historical talks on the anniversary of the Easter Rising to Dr Broderick – everyone’s favourite local historian. That was way back in 2015…"let me think about it," said Eugene and then returned with "we’ll have to set the context because context is everything". Past inevitably becomes prologue.
Unlike our next President Catherine Connolly who uses "context" to avoid answering any difficult questions, Eugene uses context to prompt them. The difference between a barrister and a historian, I suppose. Mmmmm?
Who would have thought that these lectures would be such a landmark success and would only reach their natural conclusion today, a decade later? Because that’s exactly the way history is. Everything is connected and issues, once raised, could not be ignored. A master class in point of view because if it was Brennan’s Bread history, complete with sepia images and Irish-ish music you were looking for, you were in the wrong museum. The most compelling narratives are not simple; they’re complicated and as Kirkegard remarked "Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards".
The Gaelic Revival initiated the Easter Rising that in turn began the War of Independence. The following truce and treaty gave rise to the Civil War and each Dáil begot another. Dev’s u-turn on the Treaty saw Fianna Fáil in government for 16 years – just time for a farcical economic war with our only trading partner, a constitution drafted by Waterford’s John Hearne and a world war from which we remained neutral.
Dev’s economic policies, geared toward a self-sufficient state, led to massive emigration from the fledgling republic with an estimated 700,000 taking the boat for Britain and Boston in the 1950s. When Dev took to the Áras, Lemass became Taoiseach and appointed T.K. Whittaker as economic advisor and a new look government with some serious business acumen looked towards an open economy and inward investment. Wage rounds, employment creation and educational opportunity (abolition of school fees and introduction of university grants) marked the beginning of modern Ireland as Lemass became Ireland’s greatest Taoiseach.
The seventies brought us the Arms Trial, entry to the EU, the isolation and rise of Haughey, the exit of Taoiseach Jack Lynch (who made the mistake of winning the 1977 election by too great a margin leading to a lot of unhappy TDs in search of promotion) and, of course, the rise of the Troubles in Northern Ireland that would result in over three and a half thousand deaths over the next 25 years.
Economic policy in the South was dogged by events north of the border and we were at the porch of the IMF. Governments fell in rapid succession before that Celtic Tiger began to growl and, so…we finally end up at the Good Friday Agreement, with gates that opened in many directions, and now regarded as the model for establishing peace between warring internal factions that may well yet be used to resolve the Gaza conflict.
Dr Broderick’s insatiable desire to establish and share the devil and the detail of all these events mark him aside as a fascinating lecturer. Eugene is a natural speaker because he never talks down to anyone of his loyal audience that has listened to him over the last 10 years. He has that happy knack that leaves you with the impression that we would all know all this if only we could have set aside a few years of our lives to read up on all the source material he has gathered.
The Good Friday Agreement talks are the natural sequel to all that went before as we moved very deliberately from Easter Rebellion to a successful, thriving state that is an honour to be part of. There are many in this room that have travelled along with him over the decade.
Eugene has the historian’s gift of the gab, really.
Witty…charming…disarming…informed…gossipy…inquisitive…intelligent…researcher…and likeable. The packed-out lunchtime lectures in the Garden Room of the Museum of Treasures love the folksy informal nature of the talks because they’re crammed with information that matters to everyone. Existential questions. Where we’ve come from…where we are…where we’re going.
These lectures are written with love and suffused with a deep feeling for authenticity and truth because the past is a dangerous place. Going there brings terror. Real, hard history can reach out of the page and stick its uncompromising thumb in your eye.
The Final Frontier? Somehow, I think that this starship has some more galaxies to explore.
